To the Editor:
Re “The Catholic Church’s Defiance of Trump,” by Christine Emba (Opinion guest essay, April 29):
Ms. Emba is right to note that what feels like a “Catholic moment” may say less about numbers than about need. In a culture in which politics often substitutes power for principle, and institutions struggle to speak meaningfully about purpose, the church’s moral vocabulary — however imperfectly lived — can sound like a foreign but necessary language.
Her insight that many now find life within what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls the “immanent frame” no longer sufficient rings true. Material success and personal autonomy have not answered our deeper questions of meaning, belonging or moral responsibility.
If both secular institutions and politicized religion have lost credibility, what we face is not simply decline but a deepening moral vacuum. When truth is bent to serve power and faith is reduced to a political tool, who is left to speak with authority about human dignity? And will we even recognize that voice when it dares to challenge us?
Robert Stewart Chantilly, Va.
To the Editor:
Christine Emba’s cogent essay did much to place President Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV into context, and for that I am grateful.
What helps make “this latest Catholic moment” more compelling is the unprecedented levels of depravity of political and financial elites we’ve seen of late. And with the current administration waging grossly immoral and unjust military operations across the globe — and enforcing other inhumane policies at home and abroad — it is small wonder that humanity yearns all the more to hear voices speaking moral truths and eternal verities.
The pope is just one man. Hopefully the more than one billion people he leads will amplify his calls for peace, love, justice and mercy.
(Rev.) Shaun S. Brown San Diego
To the Editor:
I appreciate and agree with Christine Emba’s statement about how much faithful grounding the Catholic Church offers in these troubled times, specifically its “robust moral vocabulary” that “appeals to something higher and more compelling than grim realpolitik.”
However, she misses an opportunity to celebrate the way other faith traditions call us to worship the divine and reject the temptation of humans to see ourselves as omnipotent. Instead, she summarily dismisses in two insulting sentences other branches of Christianity as “leaching credibility” in their pursuit of social justice and having “traded scriptural grounding for nearness to political power.”
She makes no mention of the important moral voices within those Christian branches, nor does she acknowledge the contributions by Jewish, Muslim and other faith traditions.
Yes, we urgently need the exhortation of religious leaders. Pope Leo XIV is inspiring. I am grateful for his leadership. He is not the only one.
(Rev.) Karen S. Byrne Washington The writer is a member of the First Congregational United Church of Christ in the District of Columbia.
To the Editor:
Christine Emba sees hope that a Catholic “revival of some kind is on its way.” I wish the Catholic faithful well. I would ask only that Catholic thinkers take care when pronouncing a 1.4 billion census of their faith — a number determined by the Vatican that is based at least partly on baptismal records.
These figures include many born and baptized as Catholics who, for myriad reasons, do not practice or whose faith is lapsed. I and many others I know are among them — and we wish to be omitted from that group definitively. Allow us to be called post-Catholics.
Ted Gallagher New York
A Woman’s Face
To the Editor:
Re “‘Rich Face’ Is the New Birkin Bag,” by Amy Odell (Opinion guest essay, May 3):
One glaring element was missing in this article: the societal pressure, founded in patriarchy, that suggests that women’s inherent value is related solely to a narrowly defined version of youthful beauty. Today these perspectives are amplified and strengthened by relentless social media and advertising.
I am saddened by so many women, messing with their faces and bodies, who are (purposely or not) aligning with and strengthening patriarchal norms and systems that ultimately diminish, demean and disempower women.
I will skip the neurotoxin injections to my forehead and the silicone fillers for my lips. My life is etched on my 62-year-old face, and it’s a beautiful story. And lucky me: I know a lot of women who feel the same way.
K. Anthonisen Ottawa
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